Thursday, December 16, 2010

The lords of the realm, to borrow the title of John Helyar's incredible book, smartly handled the Texas Rangers' situation last year. Rather than punish the team's baseball operations department for Tom Hicks' financial misdeeds, the lords gave the Rangers the wherewithal to make the team better during the 2010 season, to add Cliff Lee, to feed into the value of the club.

And by season's end, a franchise that had been listing because of Hicks' debt was revitalized by its first World Series appearance.

Now, one of the sport's signature franchises is having major trouble. The Los Angeles Dodgers should be baseball's West Coast jewel, but the divorce of Frank and Jamie McCourt has largely paralyzed the club during the past 15 months save for some nice second-tier moves by general manager Ned Colletti in this offseason. The club is coping with debt, and at some point, it might behoove Frank McCourt -- as he tries to hang on to his ownership -- to draw in other investors and perhaps the same kind of line of credit that the Rangers got.

But by now, McCourt probably knows this: There isn't much interest in extending a financial lifeline to him.

In fact, through inaction -- by not approving of possible partnerships or credit lines -- the other owners could put a tremendous squeeze on him in an attempt to force him to divest himself of his Dodgers ownership.

Everyone knows the wrong California team won the WS this year. Fox wants, nay, needs the Dodgers in the WS to carry the western region. If the 2011 WS was Dodgers/Yankees, the execs at Fox would be walking around like a bunch of Viagra crazed maniacs (and that's just the women). The best thing ol' Bud could do right now is give Frank a call and tell him to start listening to Larry King, The Garv, Mark Cuban, or any other group with about $750 million burning a hole in their pockets, and SELL THIS FUCKING TEAM. . .PRONTO!!